How To Start Your First Profitable Online Business With No Experience

Are you an entrepreneur who plans on scaling his or her business or an employee who plans on starting a brand new one? Anyone, from a newbie to an advanced marketer, can benefit from this training.

With the help of the Internet, anyone can start a money-making online business without technical knowledge and experience. ​I want to show you how by introducing you to my proven strategies that will allow you to live your dream life, be able to travel around the world while your business is working for you, providing you with a passive income that allows you to just enjoy your life.

If you're willing to put the hard work in, I can guarantee you that it's possible to earn a full-time income. Of course, it won't be easy.

This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to start an online business affordably and safely, even if you’re a complete newbie. For more information and in-depth guides, make sure to study my other lectures, too.

Additionally, you'll have the chance to join our community for free and get much more including support, tools, and exclusive stuff.

Benefits of having an online business

Internet marketing is a wonderful business because you have unlimited income potential. Tons of people make six figures on the internet by simply focusing their online activities.

What’s more it can also be a residual, passive form of income. This means that you can be doing whatever you like and still be making money with your internet marketing efforts.

By reaching a much broader audience there is virtually no limit to how much you can earn and how to maximize your profits. Furthermore, you become your own boss which means you decide when and how much to work.

Creating an online business is not entirely free -therefore be prepared to spend some money on it -but it's generally far cheaper than creating an offline business and there are some really inexpensive ways to build it up efficiently. Having a job while working on your business is beneficial, as you can invest some money to get things started.

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Why you need to learn the skills and invest time

Many people say they can't start a business because they have no experience and knowledge to do it properly or they don't have the right connections with the right people. These are just excuses.

Having the right mindset is the most important thing no matter what we do.

You can still build a brand or a business without experience. You can find all the information you need on the internet and by doing targeted research.

If you want to succeed in internet marketing, you need to learn the appropriate skills, invest time and some money. Without the skills, you might get frustrated which might cause failure.

To illustrate some ways of thinking outside the box, take a look at the picture below:

Just like any other field, if you don’t have the skills, then you can learn them. You can attend seminars, summits and study online marketing courses.

That's why I created this whole course: To get all the training you need to start and scale your online business.

You must be willing to learn, even if it means going out of your comfort zone.

Different types of business models

First, we’re going to cover the most common online business models.

A business model is simply a method of making money on the internet. First of all, you want to know what business models are out there and how to choose the best one for you.

There are three basic business models I want to mention now:

selling physical products

selling digital products

selling services

Physical products

To be able to sell physical products online, you usually need to have an e-commerce website. An e-commerce website is a site that sells physical products you have created or purchased yourself. ​There are plenty of online software packages like Shopify, Squarespace or WordPress where you can quickly create an e-commerce website.

​Of course, it does take much work as you need to update your site continuously, market it and fulfill orders, on the other hand, it can also be very lucrative.

Digital products

When it comes to digital products, you may want to create your own. There are many different kinds of digital products that you can create and sell in order to make money.

Selling your own products has lots of advantages because it allows you to charge whatever you want, and you are in total control of the content.

For example, you write an ebook, you promote it to your target audience, or even sell it on Amazon.

Say you build a video course on the topic you choose before you can start selling it to people.

A lot of people sell an entirely different kind of training, like dating advice, fitness consultation and so on.

Creating audio products is also a good choice that people can download and listen to in their car or anywhere they choose.

Online courses are low-risk, high-reward, and scale very well. It costs nothing extra to sell 10000 pieces or 10 pieces, apart from the obvious marketing costs.

Selling services

One of the best examples of selling services is the software-as-a-service (SaaS) method. ​It means charging someone a monthly fee for using your software.

Of course, it’s a no-brainer that you first have to have some useful software to sell. If you are able to create something useful that people will pay for, you will be able to make money each month from all of your customers. The most popular and prominent Saas services out there include Amazon Web Services, Google G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox, Adobe Creative Cloud, and so on.

One of the best ways to use this business model is to provide someone something that they can use to make money online.

Combining two or more models together

Combining the different models is also possible. You might take two or more one-time fee products and turn them into a monthly service. For instance:

web design

hosting

maintenance

SEO

membership services

marketing services

Come up with a profitable product idea

First, you need to choose the right product. It does not mean you have to own that particular product. You could also be an affiliate. If you want to get an in-depth guide about affiliate marketing, check out this blog post.

So, how do you choose the right one?

You have to decide which ones appeal to you the most.

First, find several things that you are passionate about or things you would like to do one day, then find products or services accordingly. If you find the right one, then creating content around it and marketing it online will be much easier.

Brainstorming is a good idea, but you should also research and analyze your thoughts to make sure they are viable.

Get started now because none of them are going to happen overnight and make money for you without putting in the hard work that's required.

To get some ideas:

source: (https://www.techiesdiary.com/get-online-business-idea)

Fill a demand

The truth is, passion isn't enough. Your passion should match what people are actually looking for online, and it needs to be a popular topic.

If you are planning on releasing a new product, the first question you have to be able to answer is whether there is a need for it or not. Try to look at things from the customer's point of view.

What are the burning issues people are trying to solve?

These are the things they will be searching online to resolve. ​When people are faced with a question, they will actually search for the solution and often they do this online.

If people need more money, you show them how to get it. If people want to lose weight, you teach them how to be thinner. If people have back pain, you show them how to get rid of it and so on.

A similar idea is to improve something, or a make a process easier.

For example, a lot of online business owners are struggling with their businesses. If you can create a course, or offer a service that helps​​​​​ them get more sales, you might have a product winner.

Besides, as an Internet marketer, you want to pick a topic that is profitable, has a high market value, and it's also important to determine how competitive that niche is.

Google Keyword Tool

Some online tools can help you greatly when deciding what people might like, for example the Google Keyword Tool.

Just go to the tool, insert your keywords and it will generate a list of phrases for you along with the average monthly searches and the advertising competition. You will also be able to see the estimated click per cost (CPC) of each phrase. This will give you an idea of how profitable and competitive the keywords you have brainstormed might be.

Keep doing this for all the keywords and try to find some that aren't as competitive, have a high CPC and high search volume. The tool will also generate additional keywords and phrases for you that you can search again to see if they come up with different keyword phrases that would better fit what you are looking for.

Once you have some good ideas, you will have an extensive list to investigate further. You want to see what else you can find out about this topic to determine if it's really a good choice.

Please note, Google keyword planner doesn't always give you accurate information and thus you shouldn't rely on only this. On the other hand, it's great for ideas so it’s a good start.

Use Google search

Type the keyword phrase into Google and see how many search results come up. You will get lots of results if it is highly competitive. If you find very few, then there is little demand for it.

Answer the following question:

Is someone already making money doing this?

It's unlikely that you've discovered a fantastic thing no one else is selling. Check and see if others are making money doing or teaching something similar. If they are, you're likely to have found a great idea.

Having competitors is a good thing. It helps confirming that your niche is viable.

Google Trends

You also want to check out the trends and get some additional information on your topic. To do that, Google Trends is an excellent place to go.

It's a tool, set up by Google to focus on the trends happening in a particular segment. It allows you to see how the search volume is trending over the years.

The best part is, you can add more topics and compare them with each other. This way, you can determine which one is the most suitable hot topic to pursue.

Instead of providing your long-tail keyword, you might need to type in a generic search term to get enough data. Let's see an example of our stress management course again:

Big marketplaces

Searching for your products on Amazon and eBay is also a useful strategy to see how they're selling. There are all kinds of products on these big marketplaces including physical products, info products, books, etc.

Amazon is also selling it:

You can also check affiliate marketplaces like JVZoo or Clickbank to see if you can find similar products.

How to research your target audience

Now it's time to research your target market and think about what problems your products can solve.

Your target market is the group of people who are most likely to buy what you want to sell. Market research is the only way to find out what your customers want and what you can do better to make sure that they get it.

Customers don't want products. They want the benefits the products can solve for them. Think about benefits, not features. Benefits explain how a product or service improves the customer’s situation.

What benefits are they going to get by buying your product?

When I say product, it can be both a physical or a digital product. Once you figured out how this works, you made a good progress in your sales and marketing.

It's essential to define who your target audience is.

What are their interests?

Do some research and see if there are any general interests the target audience has.

You can also do it on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter to get some additional information.

Find a group related to your business and check to see what people are talking about.

What problems does your target audience have?

Once you can identify the problem, you can look for solutions. There are plenty of problems that need to be resolved. Even the competition can’t address every issue out there.

Besides, you need to define the following about your audience:

age

gender

interests

education

income

location

hobbies

lifestyle, and so on.

Once you've learned a lot about your target market, you can create your style and branding accordingly.

Why and how to research your competitors

Before creating any website or marketing strategy, conducting a competitive analysis is highly recommended.

First, you need to identify who your competitors are.

Gather a list of companies that sell the same products or ones that are very similar. The primary purpose of this part is to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of your competition.

Check their website, blog, social media pages, subscribe to their email list.

Look for answers to the following questions:

What kind of marketing, graphic design or prices should you maintain so that you could compete with them?

​What is their branding style?

​What free services do they offer?

​What are their products?

How would you be able to do things better and differently?

Think about what makes them successful. It is extremely important to research what your competitors are doing regularly.

Google search

By simply typing your products and services into Google, your top competitors will show up on the first pages.

SimilarWeb

Besides, by using different online analysis tools like SimilarWeb, you will know exactly where their traffic is coming from, what keywords they're ranking for, their social activity and much more.

Just go to their website and put your competitor's URL into the search box to gather all the information.

Check to see where your competitor’s traffic is coming from, what are the referral sites and what social platforms they’re using.

Website and marketing technology

Now, I'll show you some additional tools that tell you about the technologies your competitor's business was built on.

BuiltWith ​is an online software that describes all themes, plugins, content delivery networks, data and usage analytics, frameworks, different marketing tools and so on, in great detail.

WpThemeDetector is a similar tool but it's limited to WordPress themes and plugins.

Visit these websites and just type an URL you want to try them out.

Why is branding important

What you have to understand is that people don't buy from companies, they buy from brands. A company is a faceless entity without a brand. As a brand, you can be a familiar presence and a trusted source.

Your brand includes everything that you are online:

logo

slogan

reputation

style

tone, and much more...

Even if you are a small business owner, you can build a brand online that is going to give you the relationship that you need with the public to turn a visitor into a buyer and then into a loyal customer.

​If you do it the right way, people will recognize and trust your brand and they will come back to you again and again.

How to choose a brand name

Now it's time to choose a decent brand name for your business. I know, name selection is often an overwhelming and exhausting experience. That's why I give you some excellent methods to find one.

​Think about your mission and about what your business does and then choose some positive and powerful words associated with your business.

You can even check the brand names of your successful competitors.

Now find all the synonyms for the previous keywords and put them together. Fortunately, you don't have to do this manually because there are some online tools out there to help you do all that​.

One of the best is Bustaname. Go there and enter your keyword ideas. Once you have some initial keywords, you will then be able to see and add their synonyms.

Bustaname will give you all possible combinations of the keywords and even the available domains.

Additionally, you could also try out these other tools and combine the words if they make sense:

Create your website and logo

If you are on a tight budget, you might develop a website and logo yourself.

Another option is to find cheap graphic designers and website developers.

The truth is, building a professional site with a drag and drop page builder is not so complicated these days, and they allow you to create one without any technical knowledge. In addition, there are tons of logo design software solutions out there to create your logo.

The logo is an essential part of your online presence and it must be instantly recognizable and easily remembered by anyone who has ever seen it.

Apart from this, you shouldn't worry about the logo too much because it's not what makes you successful. Surprisingly, if you check the most successful personal brands, you notice they have a very simple logo. Let's see some:

When it comes to building an online business, lots of people get stuck at the logo design part. You could simply create a basic logo by just writing down your brand name, make it a transparent PNG and that's pretty much it. Later you might improve it further.

Don't waste your time on the things that don't really matter. The most important part is your mission and what value you offer.

Now, let’s discuss some other basic ideas about how to get started and setting up your website.

Choose the right domain

First, choose a domain name that is going to be relevant to your brand. It also has to be short enough and memorable enough so that people will be able to remember the address and type it into their browser or a search engine.

Get hosting

The second thing that you need to do after you choose the perfect domain name is to get website hosting. You should select a plan that allows you unlimited domains and subdomains. The most popular CMS out there is WordPress and it comes with every web hosting cPanel out there.

When people want to find out more about your brand, as well as when they want to buy your products, they will visit your website.

Build matching social media profiles

Of course, your online presence also includes other places like social media profiles, guest blogs, advertisements, etc. According to your brand, you may also want to claim matching social media profile names.

You want to position yourself as an expert in the field. That means you’ll have to spend time online actually promoting that image. Some of the best ways to do this are by actively engaging on social media sites, visiting relevant groups, and forums. When people come across your expert advice, you want them to associate it with your brand and remember you in the future.

How to test your product idea

Finally, there are some useful methods to test your product idea before investing a huge amount of time into it.

Sell it first, then create it

One way to test if your product will sell is first to sell it and then create or buy it.

I know it sounds crazy but seriously, you can sell your product before creating any of it. Just build up your sales page, add your sales video, do some marketing and start taking orders. When you get orders, send people an email like this:

Unfortunately, the item(s) that you ordered is/are now out-of-stock.

An example of digital products:

​Sorry, this product is currently not available.

Only instead of taking your customers’ money the “buy now” button will take them to a “coming soon” page, where you’ll tell them that your product isn’t quite ready yet.

This method may make some customers upset but you’re merely saving yourself lots of time and money so you’ll know for sure that what you offer is something your audience wants.

Add a little script to count how many visitors make it this far and in doing so you’ll be able to get a picture of how many people would have made a purchase if you really had something for sale there. It is a perfect strategy because it lets you see how many products you can potentially sell before having created anything.

If 2% of your visitors make it to the “coming soon” page, then you know it’s worth going ahead with the product.

Once you've validated your product by getting a few orders, you can start buying it or creating it.

Build a mini version

​Another way to test your product is to create a rough version of it.

​It's a rough product that you can put together as fast as possible before you've polished everything. Complete the sketch, do some quick marketing and test to see if it sells.

These techniques can be applied to both physical and digital products.

If you're offering a coaching service, start with a beta group to test your teaching method. You might offer them some discount to be your “guinea pigs,” and you can see what methods of coaching work the best before rolling out to a broader audience at a more expensive price point.

Make sure to get lots of feedback from your beta group. As a result, it will allow you to create a highly valuable program with outstanding testimonials.

What to do if it won’t sell

Let's say you've already created your product and sales page, done some marketing, and launched your product. But it doesn't perform the way you expected, and you don't get the sales you anticipated.

Don't worry.

You can still use it for multiple purposes. You can repackage your product with a new cover and a sales page and see if it sells better that way.

Or you might use the product as a giveaway to build a list or drive traffic back to your website.

Using it as a bonus when you sell other products is also a good idea.

Furthermore, there is a high chance that the reason behind it is not your product itself but your marketing efforts.

Investigate and analyze it closely to see how to improve it.

Lastly, check the following illustration about how to start a new business in different steps. This is rather for an offline business but the action steps are similar.

​Conclusion

Can you see now how much time and effort you need to invest in starting a business? And we haven't even covered all the topics yet that you need to master.

I sincerely hope that you have learned a lot about the foundations. Employ these techniques and dive into the next lectures!

Do you have questions or anything to add? What kind of business model would you like to adapt the most? Let me guide you further. Drop a message in the comments below!

Furthermore, should you want to talk to me in private just connect with me on Facebook.

About the Author

Most people write this part in the third person but I won't. You're at the right place if you want to start or grow your online business. When I'm not busy scaling up my own or other people' businesses, you'll find me trying out new things and discovering new places. Connect with me on Facebook, just let me know how I can help.